1. Field
The present application for patent relates generally to communication systems, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for digital jammer detection for use in a communication system.
2. Background
Data networks, such as wireless communication networks, have to trade off between services customized for a single terminal and services provided to a large number of terminals. For example, the distribution of multimedia content to a large number of resource limited portable devices (subscribers) is a complicated problem. Therefore, it is very important for network administrators, content retailers, and service providers to have a way to distribute content and/or other network services in a fast and efficient manner and in such a way as to increase bandwidth utilization and power efficiency.
In current content delivery/media distribution systems, real time and non real time services are packed and delivered to devices on a network. For example, a communication network may utilize Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) to provide communications between a network server and one or more mobile devices. In this technology, a stream of OFDM symbols forming a transmit signal are packed with services to be delivered over the distribution network. Each symbol comprises a number of sub-carriers that are modulated by the data to be transmitted.
Unfortunately, a receiving device may receive a waveform that comprises the transmit signal in addition to one or more interfering signals. For example, an interfering signal (or jammer) may be caused by a nearby transmitter that is transmitting on an adjacent frequency band. In this case, the receiving device needs to have excellent linearity performance to distinguish between the desired transmit signal and the jammer. However, operating with increased linearity performance requires additional power consumption. Conversely, if a jammer is not present in the received waveform, it may be inefficient to operate with increased linearity performance.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a system that operates to detect the presence of a jammer in a received waveform. The system should also provide a power conserving mechanism that adjusts linearity performance based on whether or not a jammer is detected.